The House
by thanatophilia
Summary: Whispers of nightmares and sacrilege, the watchers-over of a sad little creature who is half dead in his borrowed skin. The weight of the ring around his finger is borne until at last the nightmares end.


**The House:**

Whispers of nightmares and sacrilege, the watchers-over of a sad little creature who is half dead in his borrowed skin. The weight of the ring around his finger is borne until at last the nightmares end.

* * *

(Ciel is My sad little bird.  
He sings such sweet songs of Anguish,  
Caged within His body,  
His Mind, His Soul.  
Caged within this world.  
He quiets as I stroke His feathers.  
His sad Eyes look up at Me and  
He whispers His Sorrows,  
For Me Alone …I suppose, I should  
Not waste My time Dreaming so.  
Ciel looks down at Me  
Cruelly, from the great height of His Throne.)

**

* * *

1 – The Bedroom**

* * *

When Ciel woke he stared at the canopy of his bed. His world was a blur of heaviness and ruin. He could hear the sounds of robins chirping, distantly. He could hear dogs barking, leaves rustling; a world of wilderness and hunger. Lizzie did not stir beside him, she slept heavily, rarely waking even when Sebastian—

"Good morning, master," Sebastian murmured, coming to the bedside with his tea tray. He moved gracefully, the way a good butler should. He waited for Ciel to sit up before delicately helping him to tie on his patch. Ciel's world righted itself, becoming washed-out, grayer, but somehow less nightmarish. "It is rare to find you awake."

The master looked at his beast silently. His mouth pulled into a tired sneer. "I slept poorly."

_His sad eyes look up at me and he whispers his sorrows, for me alone._

Sebastian smiled, slowly, carefully, letting Ciel see every tooth as it was bared. "I am sorry to hear that. Perhaps this tea will help you wake up. I have had this blend of oolong steeping since last night."

"Hmph," Ciel sniffed. He rose from the bed, padding over to the window. He had grown no less obstinate with time. He would refuse every kindness and demand every service in equal course. He was the master, always. Sebastian followed him amiably. The teacup sparkled in the early morning sunlight, and the tea itself was almost golden as it cascaded from the porcelain lips of kettle. Its deep oriental scent was sweetened slightly by a hint of rose.

"Finnian collected the petals from some of Madame Phantomhive's pink roses," Sebastian murmured.

Elizabeth rolled over, her fair hair, mussed from bed, and trailed across her face. She looked very peaceful when she slept, very happy.

"I want Finni to plant sunflowers," Ciel decided distantly, watching her. "For Lizzie."

"Yes," Sebastian agreed softly, hiding his dark mirth. "I will see that it is done, sir."

* * *

**2 - The Study**

* * *

Business as usual. Accounts and ledgers scattered, balances checked and forms signed.

"Sir?" Sebastian called from the far side of the door, smiling to himself. "Would you like afternoon tea?"

"No," Ciel replied. He propped his feet up on his desk and returned to his book. The butler entered the room after a moment anyway.

"Master," the creature offered, his voice belied his smugness. "Is there anything else I could get for you?"

Ciel was clearly irritated by his interruption. He stared at the butler over the binding of his book. Venom dribbled from his tongue. "I dreamt I was burning," Ciel answered impassively. He set his book down and plucked at his sleeves irritably; he did not like the new cut and knew Sebastian would never have him wear it again.

"A premonition, perhaps?" his butler inquired, very quietly. The expression in his eyes was one of cold hunger. Young Phantomhive looked back with the remnants of his humanity, too-big blue eyes turned hypoxic from a deep festering stagnation in his soul. He tilted his head, considering Sebastian's words.

"Yes," he answered. He beckoned Sebastian to his side, watching the sleekness of his stride as he passed through the sunlight filtering in from the high windows. When the beast was close enough, Ciel grabbed his tie and yanked, sliding the knot up tightly.

This was his noose.

Sebastian did not flinch. He did not breathe as was his edict. He only met his lord's eye in dead silence; it was a kinship they shared. When Ciel kissed him, he did not respond, only remained in his stooped position, feigning suffocation even when Ciel bit him, even when he was released.

"Take a tray of those peach shaped buns to Lizzie for me," Ciel whispered, he licked the blood from his lips.

"Be careful, my lord," Sebastian said ominously. He'd once conversed with a succubae who had extolled the virtues of his blood. Like blood to chocolate, or so he had heard. Ciel took his meaning and his eye narrowed. Sebastian shrugged. "You will damage the wood with your shoes."

Ciel took his feet off the desk and raised an aggravated eyebrow.

"Thank you, sir," Sebastian demurred sweetly, a sticky sweet line of blood running from his lip along his bone white skin.

* * *

**3 - The Kitchen**

* * *

Lady Elizabeth Phantomhive knew that Ciel had bad habits. He smoked cigarettes and drank and killed people. He lied and sometimes went to visit Lau and the Undertaker, excursions she never approved of.

However, everyone knew Ciel had bad habits. Each of them witnessed different, strange habits. No one begrudged him them, and yet… Bard still felt uneasy when he found his young lord with his fingertips balanced over the candles. Or when Ciel came to him for his blowtorch in order to heat or melt metals against his skin with it. Ciel would steal his cigarettes for this game of his. Never mind wasting his own tobacco on sears and burns.

Bard was not impressed. It lingered inside of him to want to stop the child he'd once known from finding so much comfort in the firebrands. But he understood. He saw the emotions in the young man's expression when he looked at the ruined portraits of his ancestors.

"You'll scar yourself forever that way," Bardroy tried to warn. He'd seen it before, after the war, soldiers who couldn't give it up: Hurting. Maybe he was one of them, brain tilted just the wrong way, always looking for destruction.

Maybe that was why Ciel forgave him the comment. Maybe that was why Ciel took the cigarette and pressed it carefully against Bard's collarbone instead of something much worse. Bard knew Ciel could kill and rage.

"I am scarred, forever," the young lord replied. His voice had changed over all these years, was deeper yet had a thread of choking breathlessness to it. Always like he'd screamed himself half-hoarse. Bardroy didn't know what Ciel did in some of the old mansion's room, didn't know what Ciel saw outside this house. He could have been screaming, he supposed.

When Bard pushed the burning cigarette away from his skin, his brow pinched. It had hardly hurt, Ciel knew that and his young lord continued to smile at him. He'd spent too much time with Michaelis, Bard reflected. His mouth was becoming a sickle… Maylene had warned him of this.

"You should give us more credit," the cook said, as quietly and as respectfully as could. He wasn't Finni who would crumple and simper for Ciel's love. Ciel couldn't bully him the same way.

Before Lord Phantomhive could reply, Sebastian pushed his way into the kitchen. He paused, as if surprised, but his dark eyes gleamed with knowing.

"I was coming to make coffee, but I see I have the young master to attend to first," he mouthed, his inflection twinkling with laughter. Bardroy frowned, focusing on Ciel, wanting to know if he had _listened_.

Young Phantomhive looked away from him haughtily, jerking his sleeves down over his burned skin. When Sebastian motioned politely for him to go ahead, he went without a word. Sebastian, at least, spared the cook a glance. He raised a slim eyebrow and shrugged before following after.

* * *

**4 - The Drawing Room**

* * *

Maylene played the piano better than Lizzie did. Her other senses had always far surpassed her sight. She could feel the keys more intimately than anyone Ciel had ever met. She heard things in the piano wire, just as a good assassin should. Ciel was pleased with her.

When they entertained guests, Maylene played and Lizzie Phantomhive sang and many a visitor later related a deep pleasure at the exhibition. Lord Phantomhive hardly believed them, there was no other response they could have to his wife in his own home.

However, when Maylene played for Ciel alone… the songs wound themselves in sad frenetic patterns, painting pictures of yearning and emptiness and hunger. They were strange arcane sounds—_(like laughter, like screeching metal, elegant in its discord)_—that disquieted the others as the noise echoed through the cavernous halls of the manor.

As Sebastian entered the room, they became bolder, more focused, thrumming with a deepness that echoed in the wood of the huge piano. Sebastian seemed surprised to hear the sound of it. He paused, a tea tray balance elegantly on his fingertips. He glanced at the maid, wondering if she was aware of how cleanly she interpreted his resonation. She was calm, unmoved, absorbed in the movements of her fingers.

Sebastian smiled and hummed to himself, low in his throat.

Ciel caught the indiscretion, such a vigilant master.

"Sebastian," he called, something like masochism glinting in those innocent eyes of his. "As you know the tune so well, when you have served the tea, I want you to accompany Maylene's playing."

Sebastian bowed his head, eyes narrowing. He poured out the rich cinnamon tea, leaving the teapot well within Ciel's reach before crossing the room. He stood beside Maylene a moment, watching her at work before he began, opening his throat to the shadows that lived and bred inside him.

The weird harmony of his voice twined easily with Maylene's improvisation. Their music fascinated young Lord Phantomhive, who watched the ecstasy of Sebastian features in captivation as he let those haunting baritones slide from between his thin mocking lips.

* * *

**5 - The Portrait Gallery**

* * *

Ciel spent a rainy afternoon in the gallery where the half-singed portraits of his mother and father hung. Many artists had offered to have them repainted, but Ciel refused time after time with that sweet lying smile that had been seared into him by the same brand which had stolen his childhood.

"My lord?" Sebastian inquired quietly. "Why do you not have the portraits redone?"

Phantomhive, a young man beautifully dressed with all the pale elegance of a true noble, sneered. The expression was most unbecoming.

"Because this is their legacy," he replied with darkness and hate undercutting any good breeding in his voice. "Immolation is the life they have left to me."

Sebastian smiled. He approached where his young master—_(an eternity beneath his wings, Ciel was forever more a child, a tiny chick whose potential was still yet endless)_—perched in the window. Raindrops cast faint shadows across his face like tears. Sebastian knew perfectly well Ciel no longer cried.

"You belittle yourself," the demon whispered as he brushed at one dark stain against Ciel's cheek. The man recoiled from him irritably, but Sebastian caught his chin, his grin impossibly huge and serpentine in a loosely articulated jaw. "You are one of the few of your mewling kind to take your future into your own hands."

He pulled his master forward, fitting their mouths together perfectly, warm and open mouthed, his tongue only a flitting caress. Ciel did not respond to him, stared at his butler just as his butler stared at him, though Sebastian's expression laughed and _purred_.

"And for that, you should be commended," Sebastian murmured as they parted, still very close, his tongue still constantly in motion, tasting him on the air. A bridge of saliva was strung from the tip to Ciel's moist lower lip, it broke as he spoke and Sebastian licked it up then.

Ciel looked at him impassively. The sound of the rain filling the silence as their breath mingled: Ciel's persistent dusty exhalations and Sebastian's infernal hellfire.

Sebastian stepped away from him and straightened his gloves and tie. Ciel returned to his contemplation of the rain soaked gardens where, below, Finnian was scurrying about happily.

"Thank you, Sebastian, that will be all," the young lord answered drearily.

* * *

**6 – The Garden**

* * *

On the first of Spring, the young Lord Phantomhive took his beautiful young wife out into the gardens for tea. The enthusiastic young gardener proudly displayed the peonies he had cultivated the year before. Finni confessed that he had had help, but Elizabeth was delighted nonetheless. She kissed the young gardener on the forehead. He blushed.

A young maid carefully brought out the tea she had brewed and the biscotti that the cook had made. She set the tray down with careful, trembling hands, and poured each cup perfectly. Lady Phantomhive invited her to sit and stay. The young maid did so nervously.

Birds sang overhead, and Bardroy appeared, carting along a table and a record player. Violins and pianos spit and fizzled from the open funnel. Lady Phantomhive was delighted as Bardroy took his turn dancing with both Maylene and Finnian.

Ciel touched Elizabeth's hair gently and smiled at her. She giggled brightly and offered him her hand. He took it and they rose to dance.

From afar, Sebastian watched this curious farce. He plucked his gloves off slowly, stained as they were after dispatching the latest threat to the Phantomhive home. He tossed them and the body into the fireplace. He whispered a word and they were incinerated immediately in sudden hungry explosion of flame. He continued to watch the garden party coldly from the window as he replaced his white gloves.

Ciel caught him looking from below. He did not disturb his dance with Lizzie, but he did not look away. Sunlight made his mousy hair seem bright and healthy, but there was nausea in his cheeks, death in his eyes.

Sebastian smiled at him, grim and predatory before he disappeared from the window and came to join the rest in the garden. He had prepared a cake, after all.

* * *

**❼ - The Bedroom**

* * *

Lizzie decided to go on a wine tasting tour in the fall. Ciel could not accompany her, despite a deep desire to do so, because of a case he hadn't told his young wife about. Without his company, she went on the tour with her mother, who approved of the venture, stating pointedly that it would help her giddy daughter to become more sober and sophisticated.

The lady of the Phantomhive house should have a great knowledge of wines… even if Sebastian was always there to make sure everything was perfect.

The business that Ciel had at hand was the usual horrible disgrace to humanity that he so often found himself surrounded by. He feared he was worth no more than that terrible legacy and wished he could ask his father if he had ever felt that way.

After what he'd seen… he spent most of Lizzie's vacation in bed, unable to eat.

He slept poorly at night, dogged by nightmares drenched in blood and inhuman savagery.

"Sebastian," he called plaintively, knowing that his butler would hear him no matter where in the house he was.

"Yes, my lord?" Sebastian replied from the door a moment later. It was pitch inside the bedroom, the curtains drawn against both day and night. Without his eyepatch to hide the sight, he could see Sebastian's form—_(on all fours like a lizard, saliva drooling from between razor sharp teeth, a tongue of flame, eyes of darkness, stalking him in the black. Oh god, oh god, what have I, what have I)_—crawling towards him.

"I want you to sing for me while I sleep."

Sebastian's bemused smile glinted from the shadows. These silly weak little humans. "If it pleases you."

"All night, Sebastian," Ciel commanded coldly.

The beast's eyes narrowed with irritation, his smile became sharp and thin. "Of course, my lord."

His voice filled the chamber, the arias and strange lilting lullabies of the damned dancing together, copulating in the darkness. The sound of it made Ciel dizzy, crazy, and… he spiraled into a warm unconsciousness, swaddled by the promise of his own doomed fate.

He dreamt of being strung from golden barbs. He dreamt of blood flowing freely from his nose, making his lips slick and then tacky. He dreamt of bees kissing his ears, stinging his shoulders with a burning venom.

He dreamt of hands and screams caressing his skin, every white and moldering inch of him.

He woke… faintly aroused. Sebastian's voice still blanketing him—_(thick and sensual and tempting and terrifying)_—as he rose up on the pillows. With the curtains drawn around his bed he masturbated quietly, perfunctorily. From behind heavy lidded eyes he watched dangerous gleaming amber shapes dance with the white stars that flashed with his orgasm.

"Sebastian," he called, sulkily wiping his hand on the sheets. "Stop. Go get my tea."

He heard the butler hesitate in the room.

"Yes, my lord," he replied, and then tread out softly.

* * *

(Ciel is reaching for Me  
From atop His Burning Throne.  
With My own leathery wings I can  
Snatch him from Destruction,  
But I can see in His Eyes that He  
Would much rather Die.  
He lets out an Anguished little trill,  
A sad Song of Hatred and Mourning.  
I catch Him up between My teeth,  
As the flames mount higher and higher.  
I crunch His little Bones one by one and  
His Blood drips from My jowl.  
"Sebastian…" Poor little thing. I should  
Not waste My time Dreaming so.)

* * *

**Standard Disclaimers.**


End file.
